Friday, 30 October 2015

The deadline
for applications for the Vesuvian Archaeology Summer School 14-18 March
2016 is approaching. The
Herculaneum Society is able to offer
a number of scholarships of €250 to participate in this excellent
week-long session, which is already accessibly priced. Please let your
students know. Details on the Society's website, www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk.

The Herculaneum Society is pleased to announced three
awards of £1,000 each for postgraduate students to conduct research on
Herculaneum and related topics. One or more of the awards will be for
Herculaneum papyrology, in collaboration
with the Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi (www.cispe.org).
Further details may be found on the Society's website, www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk.
The deadline for applications is 15 December 2015.

All 99 rooms in the villa are covered (apart from a couple of
inaccessible ones) and a full interactive plan is included.

We have set out the
pages of this villa so that you can first go through and see the photographs of
the 99 rooms in number sequence.

After this are more
Jashemski excavation photographs arranged by year so that you can see the villa
as it emerges from the lapilli over the years, and also follow the excavation
and casting techniques used.

To make them easier to use we have created fewer pages, with more photos
per page, so they may take a little longer to load if you have slower
broadband.

Friday, 16 October 2015

graet story circulating in Italian and English at the moment. Here is one version from The Local:

Pompeii thieves claim relics are cursedTourists who have stolen relics from Pompeii often send back their loot, with some claiming the artefacts are cursed, according to the site's archaeological superintendent Massimo Osanna. In recent years, the site has received around a hundred packages returning stolen relics, which are often accompanied by letters explaining that the items have brought the thieves nothing but bad luck. “They write that the stolen pieces have brought them nothing but trouble,” Osanna told Corriere Della Sera. “They say they can trace back all their family troubles to their theft at Pompeii."

Friday, 9 October 2015

D is for DecidiusUnlike some letters, there are not many examples of family names found in Pompeii that begin with a D. There is one, however, the Decidii, that though small in terms of the epigraphic material, is rather interesting for the fact that one member appears to be the subject of adoption. Generally speaking, in the Roman world, adoption was not something that concerned young children, but was an act carried out in adulthood in order to create a male heir when there was none. This could be for financial or political reasons, but was, in most cases, an attempt to create a legacy, perpetuating a family name when no male issue existed. Typically, this was done when one had something besides just a name to leave behind – wealth, power, or influence. This appears to be the case for a Decidius, who through adoption becomes the first (epigraphically) known member of another gens, one that eventually is one of the most powerful in Pompeii.

Sunday, 4 October 2015

The western Insula Episcopalis of Naples is an archaeological site of great value in order to reconstruct the history of Neapolis. The first phase of construction is a large orthostatic wall with a drainage channel dating to the 4th century BC. Later the wall suffered a collapse, but we don’t know exactly when it happened. In the first half of the 1st century AD (probably in the first quarter of the century), when Naples became a municipium, a thermal bath was built above the wall. At the end of the 3rd-4th century AD a wall in opus vittatum was built in the south-east corner of the bath and the Aurelius Eutycianus’ leaden fistula was placed at the same point, recording the transformation of the original character of the thermae. Finally, the orthostatic wall and the bath were completely obliterated by the early Christian buildings, the Basilica of Santa Restituta and the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte.

Saturday, 3 October 2015

For those who missed its publication over the summer: one of Italy's leading journalists - Francesco Erbani - in the culture sector has just written a book called: 'Pompei, Italia', which attempts to look behind the headlines of recent years to understand the problems related to Pompeii's management and conservation. In doing so, Erbani describes Pompeii within the larger context of Italy's public administration and problems on a national scale - Pompeii becomes a symbol of Italy's cultural heritage in general and the state of the nation.
See a short video where the author describes his book: